


albedo

by afearsomecritter (jsaer)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-20
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:35:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28183254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter
Summary: Obi-Wan sits in his cabin, slowly turning his lightsaber over and over in his hands. A thousand tiny scratches and scuffs on durasteel and leather catch in the harsh overhead lights.(your lightsaber is your life, his master told him over and over and he repeated this to his student like he knew what it meant)--a series of snippets loosely set in the same au
Comments: 3
Kudos: 10





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> -slaps these snippets up like they're not the writer equivalent of scribbly gesture drawings as i try to write for another fandom-

\--

Obi-Wan sits in his cabin, slowly turning his lightsaber over and over in his hands. A thousand tiny scratches and scuffs on durasteel and leather catch in the harsh overhead lights.

( _your lightsaber is your life_ , his master told him over and over and he repeated this to his student like he knew what it meant)

He thumbs the switch, the perpetual background hum of the kyber singing to life as the bunk washes blue. Obi-Wan knows what lightsabers sound like to those without the Force, a low fluttering hum. He’d tried once to explain how kyber feels and sounds to a jedi, sound and touch and taste and sense memory bleeding in somewhere deeper than their marrow, how finding the crystal that was _theirs_ meant one that meshed with their own signature. 

Satine had indulged his exhausted rambling, moonlight streaming from the boarded up window of their hiding place painting deep shadows under her eyes. 

_Like a song?_ she’d asked. There had been a quiet hope in her voice, both their ears still ringing from blasterfire and bombs even hours later. 

_Yeah_ , he’d replied, instead of how sparring with Bant was to hear crashing waves clattering against stone and everything would smell taste faintly of citrus and how his own gave the impression of _mint_ of all things and used to make Garen sneeze and-

_Like a song_.

Now he sits and listens to the hum blend into the sounds of the cruiser- of his cruiser. There’s a slow pulse in the feel of the kyber now, like a hyperdrive’s vibration in his bones. There’s still a faint impression of mint and feel of wet stone- but the low wail of wind through canyons has been joined by the heartbeat of a Jedi Cruiser engine. 

( _your lightsaber is your life_ and that means more than blocked blaster fire and slices of molten metal-)

Given enough time, enough experience as life wears through the stone like rivers the song can change. It’s not considered damage, to have new notes, new textures in the kyber, all things change given enough time. 

(sith kyber don’t scream, things must be alive to scream but there is something _wrong_ about the sound they make-the noise of hulls ripping bone snapping crackle of lighting, blades made of the sound of things _breaking_ )

Cody had slapped his lightsaber into his hand earlier, exasperation in every line of his body (so much better than the wary respect and awe of their first weeks together before obi-wan had stood teeth bared and bleeding over downed droids that _would not_ get to the injured men behind him-). 

“Your life, sir,” he’d drawled. 

\---------


	2. Chapter 2

\---

These are the things the Jedi learn when they go to war.

That they are not suited for it, at first, too used to being in singles or pairs as scouts spies diplomats raiders anything but generals. Then they find themselves with an army of replicated faces and individual souls, flaring sparks of personhood they learn to identify blind. They learn what it is to rush an ocean of enemies in the open, blaster fire before and behind and how it feels to have those sparks wink out. One. By. One. 

(they were never meant to be generals, but they learn in blood painting armor and wracking guilt and lives entrusted to them, lives bred for a war the jedi did not know was coming. early on one young knight crouches in the medical tent, robes covered in blood and bile and uncaring of that fact as they gently gently gently soothe those that cannot be helped, those they _hadn’t helped_ -)

The Jedi learn, and they learn quickly. 

These generals did not ask for these soldiers but they found and used them anyway. Burnt them on the same pyres they settled their own dead in after that first slaughter. A shell shocked padawan, only just old enough to have fought and three days from a class on mortuary rituals is the one to ask the clones how they take care of their dead. They don’t, is the bewildered reply, the longnecks just throw them away. The padawan says not anymore, and asks if they would like to be sent to the force with the Jedi. They would.

(the padawan will remember the fate of those earlier clones- the brothers-the _vode_ and tells the council. the vode will remember that the jedi saw them as people enough to have rites)

There is an awful sort of calm that can be found in battle, in the beats between the scream of artillery fire. A stillness so far removed from the peace of the temple but everything else is mired in death and pain and to feed from that would cause more and then they are likely to hurt their own and no, no more. So serenity becomes the space between pounding heartbeats, the breath before firing, the flex of muscle before balance. The Light is far from there, but so is the Dark. It is the nothingness between everything. It is the Force.

(there is no _peace_ )

There are things the Jedi (re)learn, when they go to war. 

\-------


End file.
